Life Lessons from a Runaway Werewolf
by ArcticSnowcones
Summary: Let's rewind. Before Beacon Hill's was ruled by Scott McCall. The time of Hales and Peter. The things the adults of Beacon Hill don't want you to know... These stories are written by the unstable and lovable Mother of Malia. (Reviews are appreciated! :D)
1. Dear Random Jogger

It's not like I meant to punch him. It was an... accident, all those years ago. Anyway, he stared it. I can still see dilated eyes and as he tells me of the werewolves in the night. And so I gave him a black-eye. It will heal, I told him as whimpered at the dent his body left in the locker. I was actually aiming for his nose. You know, really make him bleed. But Peter bloody moved. Why? To stare at his reflection in the mirror behind me. Arghh! Men are so narcissistic, pig-headed-

This isn't a hate speech. You may hate reading it. But it's an apology. To who, the impatient reader may ask. Why to that strange boy I met in the woods who told me to run. And who I didn't listen to. His words exactly: Run. Run. Beacon Hills is a death-trap. Just imagine that with abit more sweat, wild arm gestures and set in a mysterious forest night. There you go. You can see it now can't you?

I met Peter when I first arrived at Beacon Hills. With muscles curved like a coke glass and pearly whites from an orthodontist commercial. Add a hair flick and a low husky "Hey." And I was falling down the deep dark well of love from which there was no return but Alice-like madness. On day one he walked me to my class like a gentleman: textbook. Day two he picked my books up when I dropped them: elementary. By day three he knew my locker combination: verging stalker-ish, but adorable none the less. And day four, he told me his family were werewolves: Wait what?!

That's why Peter Hale's left eye looks like a cat that ate eye shadow vomited up on it. No, he wasn't born that way.

" _I'm_ not a werewolf!", he whimpered.

Still riled up, my scream echoes through the lacrosse locker rooms. "And I'm not a frecking fairy, but you can't say something like that and expect me not to react in violence!"

Yeah... screaming is kinda my default setting. My third grade maths teacher wrote in my report to try aromatic candles, drum circles or a duck tape. I'm paraphrasing. In the middle of a shouting match with my four day might-as-well-be boyfriend, so now is a good time as any to tell you a bit about myself. The names Ely, and if you're anything like a highschool substitute teacher, let me clarify before you make a fool of yourself, pronounce it E-lie. And I may have a boss that is a sexual harassment law suit, with a comb over at the local IGA. But I have dreams of... well, not working there. Maybe a life of crime awaits, the possibilities are endless. Mum thinks I should see a physiatrist. You agree with her, don't you? Backstabber.

I run out of the locker room in tears. It was like one of those video games where you think you know every rule, and maybe it's boring but YOU GET TO SHOOT PEOPLE! Sorry, sorry. I'll go back to my metaphor. And then you meet someone who puts their hands on their hips and says, "You, like totally know it's not real." So you curl your fingers like a psycho shaking with madness, like, "I knew that. Why you got to spoil it?"

Ignorance may not be bliss but it's better that knowing that a family of flesh eating savage werewolves live in the forest right next to your house. I can't go to the police and I can't talk to my mum because she already believes I'm crazy, so I grab the next best thing. A shot gun from my wall and a trusty pair of Doc Martins. Then I sit on a chair stroking the barrel gingerly, because everyone knows that stroking weapons releases more endorphins than staring at baby photos. Anyone? Okay maybe that's just me.

...

Boy did I scare the pizza man! I apologised quickly and told him that my boyfriend and I had a fight to which he nodded understandingly and sped off in him care. Not before dropping the pizza on the floor. I'm not complaining. Like Frenchy Fries my imaginary friend from grade two would say: When life gives you free pizza, eat it.

The phone rings. It was Peter. Fear boils in me softening the uncooked spaghetti of love swimming inside. "What?"

"I'm sorry. Really. I just thought-"

"What? What did you just think?"

He says in a smaller voice this time. "I thought that you knew. I saw your eyes on Wednesday and they were glowing."

In a romantic daze, I sigh and loose tension on the grip of my shot gun. I pull a strand of hair behind my ear, quickly forgetting to be angry. "Aww. You think my eyes glow?"

"No. Literally glowing orange like a werewolf."

"Jerk."

"The Argents, a family hunts werewolves-"

"Why?"

"Because they're weird. This is supposed to be a heartfelt moment, so shut up for a minute. Anyway my aunt had a child which they stole from us. She was born the same time as me. And they wouldn't raise the child as their own or kill it because-"

"Yeah. Hurry up."

"For crying out loud Ely! You're my freaking cousin."

Oh.

"Ely?"

"Hm."

"Hm?"

"Yeah. Hm. I knew I was adopted and I guessed that I came from a family. I didn't really think I'd be a werewolf. Maybe a teen pregnancy or small desert community. But I don't think even think my psychic dog, Zara could have guessed that."

The is static until he says, "I'm surprised your taking this so-"

"Well? Were you serious going to say well? I am in shock. Shock my friend. My brain can't even comprehend that we share the same gene pool, and you look like that! And I got stuck with this! I'm a werewolf! An honest-"

He cuts me short. "Can cousins still marry?"

"Really Peter?!" I let out an almighty howl that shakes the foundations of my weather-board house, and got all the dogs in the block to reply with syncopated barks.

Yup. Werewolf genes and hormonal teenagers don't mix. I'm still not sorry for that black eye, although I hear now day's he's a werewolf who lives in a high rise building and frolics in the forest with teenagers and a v-neck. Oh Peter. The question isn't what wrong; it's what actually went right for you. So stranger in the darkness of the night I'm sorry I didn't listen. That I didn't run and that I stayed in Beacon Hills for that week, and then ran into the Mexican desert.

What was your name again? Oh yeah, Stalinski. Hope you had a nice life, raised some kids that gave knowledge that fell on other ignorant ears. And maybe a kid to beat the crap out of my cousin. Keep beating. You'll be there awhile.

Signed Ely.


	2. Dear Deaton

"Wow, I'll tell all my friends I knew Deaton, the famous lacrosse player in high school." I splay my arms up like a billboard. He smiled and blushed like a girl.

My second week at Beacon Hills and I was taking a different approach to my love life. A direction other than my cousin, Peter. He sat starring awkwardly at Deaton and I's flirting banter. A smile forms on my lips and put my arms around his large shoulders. He blushes. Boys. Easier to play than a triangle.

Dear Deaton,

You seemed kind of nice, and I think we could have totally been together. If you weren't a lying jerk!

Sorry, sorry. Our first half of the date was magnific. Candle light, pasta and garlic bread. God am I sucker for a guy who can cook. Just not so great with conversation. "So..."

"So..."

"So..."

"So..."

"So..."

I twirled pasta on my fork. "Great cooking."

He just stared at his plateful.

"Where did you learn?"

A gentle smile played on his mouth. "My mum."

Silence was thick in the air.

Alright. Talking was going nowhere. Time for a different approach. I give long sigh and cock my head. His dark chocolate eyes stared into mine. Just close your eyes and lean in, I told myself.

Wait for magic to happen. Wait for it. Wait for it. His lips should be on mine by now. Seriously?! I opened my eyes and he sat like a deer in headlights, like my lips are a BMW.

"Deaton! You're supposed to kiss me!"

He stared at his hands. "Oh. Um..."

"Excuse me?" The sassy black woman in me starts spilling out.

"I'll... I'll do it next time."

"Next time?! Are you kidding me? There is no next time! You don't want to talk to me, you don't want to kiss me, what do you want?!"

"I was kind of hoping that after this date, you'd put in a good name for me to Natalie Martin."

Now I stared at him like he's a BMW and I'm caught in his high-beams. "You are friends with her?"

"Yes."

"So just say something like..."

"Deaton is a passionate kisser?"

"Yeah. See? Not that hard." He innocently smiled at me.

I cocked my head. "Are you for real? Don't look at me with those puppy dog eyes. You used me and spat me out like a chew toy."

"You use too many metaphors."  
"No kidding Sherlock! I'm angry! You know what I'm going to tell Natalie? Huh? That Deaton is a no good, lying dirty scum ball. With pasta all over him."

That last line made him look out of his lap. "What?"

I grab the plate of spaghetti and smother it all over him. That perfect white shirt, his puppy dog little face. All angry tomato red. And just to ram in my point I shoved a giant meatball in his gapping mouth. That's where I left him, the jerk, and ran out of his house in tears. Not before shoving the garlic bread loaf in my backpack.

What? I eat when I'm sad. I started driving to I don't know where. Ripping off chunks of garlic bread in-between the sharp turns. Just like drink driving, I think there should be a law for not being angry and driving. I did not see that car.

Crash! A little red jeep turned out of the forest straight into the front of my car. She ran out, her black curly hair bouncing behind. "Oh my goodness! I am so sorry!"

I roled down my window and shrugged at her, "I won't press charges if you don't."

She laughed. "I 'm Melissa."

"Ely. Do you go to Beacon High?"

"Yeah. But I think I'm in the year under you." She saw my red puffy eyes. "Are you alright?"

I sighed. "No."

She opens the car door and hugged me. "Tell me about the boy."

I gave her a smile and wipe off the running mascara with a tissue, she took from her pocket.

"Thanks. You want garlic bread?"

"Hell yeah."

Anyway Deaton. Back to the matter at hand. I hate you worse than Peter. Which is saying a lot. But without you I would have never met one of the greatest people in Beacon Hills. I hope your bald and miserable and-

Oh. I just looked you up on Google. Hey, you are bald. Sucks to be you. Have fun at the Vet Clinic. I knew you'd never become a famous lacrosse player. Your puppy dog eyes are where they belong, where you can no longer use me as your chew toy. And for your information Natalie Martin didn't even like you. Keep dreaming.

Signed Ely.

P.S. Enclosed in the mechanics bill that I never payed. Anyway, it's your fault I crashed it.


	3. Dear Mr Glitter Glue

I tip-toed slowly into the male locker room and nearly fainted at the stench. Melissa bobbed behind me. "Hurry up!" she whispers.

"Don't you think this is a little mean?" I ask Natalie in front of me.

Lips slathered in lip gloss purse at me. "You said he was a jerk right?"

"Yeah, but-"

"So we have full excuse to pull this on Deaton." Melissa finished.

Black scuff marks on the floor, a broken mirror and a body shaped dent in one of the lockers. This was the right place. "Wait. I don't even know how to pick a lock."

Natalie pulls out a brown bobby pin from her messy bun. "Good thing I do."

"Girl, what don't you know?"

That compliment from Melissa made Natalie give an evil grin.

Shower drips echoed in the distance. "So what number did you say it was?"

Crap. It was at that point I realised I had forgotten. "I think it was 45 or 44. Somewhere around there."

"Ely!"

With a level head and a hair flick, Natalie said, "The way I see it, we have a fifty-fifty chance. One choice we get Deaton, and the other his locker neighbour."

In the light of the moon the whites of Melissa's dark eye's glow with excitement. "I like your thinking." She russeled around in her bag. "I have the cloth dye. Have you got the glitter glue?"

"The perminent stuff."

"Well then, let's get to work."

A lot of glitter glue and pink dye later, we locked it back up and ran out of the school. In twenty-four hours it would be the game. And I would get my revenge on Deaton in something more perminent than pasta.

...

We sat nervously on the bleachers, waiting to see our plans fruition on the field. Then Deaton ran on... in a perfect uniform.

He smiled and waved at the crowd, like no bodies business. Natalie, Melissa and I groan in unison. Freezing cold and watching the jerk run across the lacrosse field. He's just so damn perfect!

And then we see it. A small little kid on the bench. In a fluro pink lacrosse jersy, cradling a glitter glue helmet in his lap.

I turned to my friends, wide eyed and smiling. We laugh and cackle like crazy ladies throughout the rest of the lacrosse game, panting and crying and gasping for air at our practical joke gone wrong.

Natalie gives a wicked grin. "You said it was fifty-fifty!"

The rest of the game consisted of booing Deaton and cracking up laughing every time we looked at the helmet glimmering in the field lights.

I think you hate me, glitter glue guy. But just to let you know, you made my day. No week! I'm sorry you had to be locker buddies with a jerk but hey, at least the coach actually noticed you and put you on the field for once. I hear that you adopted a kid of your own. Good on you! I'm proud that you rose above this incident and for that you are the coolest person I never met in Beacon Hills. With a helmet like that, you could disco at any party. Thank you for making me laugh.

Signed, Ely.


	4. Dear Guidance Councillor

When I was with Melissa and Natalie that entire "werewolf thingy" was swept under the carpet. Sadly they weren't around me forever and eventually I had to confront the hairy problem.

One week on, Peter's bruise was still yellow, but add a foundation touch up and he looked like my fist had never graced his face with its presence. My hard work was for nothing.

Changing my locker combination after Hale memorised it was only one step on the road to a Peter free life. Step two, was navigating new roots to classes to avoid him in the halls. I'm not disclosing the secret passages, but more than three of them involved a run through the male bathrooms. Argh! Just writing the word makes my nostrils shudder with fear.

It was working perfectly until Wednesday. When Peter managed to chat in the boy's toilet.

Head down, head down. Don't look around and don't draw attention. I ram into a solid chest. Solid like a glass coke bottle. A millisecond glance and I saw his pearly whites catching the beam lights like Vaseline glass.

"Sorry," I muttered under a baseball cap, in the manliest tone I could muster. Smells of cinnamon and hot-chocolate wafted off his shirt.

And then Peter stops in his tracks. "Ely?"

"Nope." I try manoeuvring around.

"Ely!" He grabs my backpack. "You can't avoid me forever."

"Yes I can." I look around at the offensive graffiti scribbled on the tiles to avoid his sparkly blue eyes.

"My sister wants to meet you."

Sure she does. "I don't want to meet her."

"Yes you do. Everyone wants to meet her." That little blueberry!

"Is she the Dalai Lama?"

"What is that a kind of alpaca?"

Is he kidding? "No."

I start walking to the exit. He yelled back, "Tell me you'll think about it."

"I'll think about it." Just how much I think about maths homework and wanting to play lacrosse.

"Really?"

I gave him an aggravated look. "No." I don't wait to hear the what on Peter's end. The hallway echoed with my sneaker squeaks. And my only thought was don't look back.

In the safety of the woodwork class, a long gasp escaped. Yes, I want to meet the family, even though my mum is dead but, if I'm perfectly honest with myself, I'm terrified. My opinions are as followed:

1\. Go to the guidance councillor. What's he going to say? Hey Ely meet your savage werewolf family, but don't do it on a full moon.

2\. Give in to Peter. Tell him I'm sorry and let myself confidence slip back a few notches. Maybe say sorry for his eye and the whole shotgun incident. Like I would do this.

3\. Do my woodwork project. Because the teacher is staring at me through safety glasses. Now she's screaming. And throwing her arms wildly to attract my attention.

Maybe I should go with the third option. Wait. No. Now she's moved to a boy with a game boy underneath his desk. There's always that final option. Run to the Mexican desert. Nah. Too hard.

My mind itself feels like a desert, in desperate quench for answers. In a moment of emotional battleship, I write a letter to Peter and slot it in his locker after school.

"Peter,

I'm taking your advise you weirdo. Tomorrow. After school. I'll be the one itching to key your car.

Ely."

What? My teenage self wasn't one with words. I walked out of the school intensely filled with a wildfire of emotions. Counting down the hours when I meet my real family. My real family.

My real werewolf family.

God, it sounds crazy even now.

So Guidance Councillor,

I'm sorry I never visited you. Maybe I should have. Let me rephrase that: I should have definitely seen you.

And to make up for lost time, I write to you now, from the Mexican Desert all my issues. Your wishing you chose a different career aren't you? It's okay. When I'm finished you can send me letters with all your issue enclosed. We could be Pen Pals! I've always wanted one!

Maybe I'm rushing our relationship. I'll post this and then let's see where this takes us.

Just a word of warning, I'm extremely volatile.

I kid!

Kind of.

Signed Ely, your possible pen pal.


	5. Dear Talia

The second hand on the Maths room clock, was always too slow. Until that day. The day I meet my crazy werewolf family. The day had actually been quite nice. No conversations in the boys bathroom and no encounters of the Deaton or Peter kind. The bell rang, and I hoped to God that I wouldn't have to use the will that I doodled in my Math's book margin. Cremation is so last season.

I walked to the car to a slow death march in my head. Peter grinned from the driver seat.

"Hop in."

I sneered. "Aren't you supposed to offer me candy before you kidnap me?"

"Nah. I wasn't too sure what colour jelly snakes you preferred."

I hop in shotgun, and we drove out of the carpark, with the death march in more of a swing beat now. I might have left a sweat stain on the carseat I was that nervous. I'm not appoligising... it was Peter's car.

He took a sharp left into the forest and I muttered afew curse words. "Maybe we should go back."

He grinned. "No, no, no. We've gotten this far and you're not chickening out."

It was worth a shot. "Purple," I said.

Peter squints his blue eyes at me. "What?"

"Next time you want to kidnap me, bring purple jelly snakes. Okay?"

"Okay..."

He pulls up near a huge spooky house, that wouldn't be out of place in the Adam's Family. I'm just waiting for Peter to start clicking and singing. It never happened. Oh well... maybe a life of musical theatre doesn't await him.

"This is my place." He pushed the door that squeaks menacingly. I close my eyes expecting people as strange as Mautisia, and Billbo Baggins. One hand still on the door handle, ready to make a runner.

"Hello?" I squint my eyes open a fraction. And... well... that was an anti climax.

Perfectly ordinary person stand before me, in perfectly ordinary clothes, with a boringly ordinary house. Not a single disembodied hand in sight, nor frightening taxadermi.

I let out a sigh of relief. Peter nudges me. "This is Talia."

Once you take in the absence of man eating plants, you would realise that Talia, the girl elegantly offering me her hand to shake, is really quite stunning.

Peter grinned. "You know, on Talia's first fullmoon she ate a squirrel

She glared at him, then smiled. "You must be Elysia."

I tried to say something but the only things popping into my head were vivid images of squirrel massacres. I can't breath. The silence lasted longer than Maths class in my head. So I just blurted out, " Sup."

Sup. Sup! Who says 'sup? My heart beat pounded in my ears and my hands were sweating like a basketball player in thermals.

Peter opens his mouth to say something like "Hey guys want to see my sock puppet collection?" I don't really know, because before the words could come out of his mouth, something else came out of my mouth.

Vomit. Vomit that tasted vividly of French toast and poster paint. All over Peter's designer shoes. He may have started crying, but I didn't wait to see the aftermath. I just ran into the forest and climbed a tree.

I sat there for a while with the scent of poster paint thick in the air, replaying my stupidity over and over again. The wind rustled and shook the tree.

I have no clue how long I was up there, before talia came up.

She sat on the branch next to me, gave a long sigh and said, "Hey."

"Hey."

"Do you want to start over?"

"Yes please."

"So I guess you're my cousin."

I smiled at her. "Yup. It'll make for an akward Christmas dinner."

"I know what your thinking. How can Peter be such a jerk?"

I laughed and nearly fell off the branch. "How did you know?"

Talia, thanks for being the least jerkiest cousin I know. You taught me two valuable lessons:

1\. Don't judge the family on one member. Otherwise I would never have you as an awesome cousin.

2\. And don't knock squirrels until you try them. Seriously, after a year in the Mexican Desert, squirrel tastes like a Big Mac. (Sorry if there are blood smears on the letter. It's the squirrels, not mine!)

I heard about the fire, but I think if Peter can rise from the dead, why can't you? Here's hoping!

Signed, Ely


End file.
